====== Building a website on SDF ======


Creating your own websites can be fun and SDF gives webspace to all its validated users, so the moment you become validated you can begin creating your own websites straight away.

In this tutorial when text looks like "this" this means it's a command you can run in your shell, once you've logged into SDF.

==== Getting Started ====

  * "mkhomepg" - This command needs to be executed before you can start building your web pages. When you execute this program, it will create a directory in which you can put all your web files. This directory is sym-linked into your home directory, under the name 'html'. (A sym-link is sort of like a shortcut in Microsoft Windows.)You will be prompted to select a URL for your website. This URL is what other internet users type into their web browser to view your web pages. If you're not an ARPA member then you may only use url's in the form of '"<your login>.freeshell.org"'. For instance, my web pages are stored at '"alterego.freeshell.org"'. If you're an ARPA member, there are many different domains you may use.

===== Your First Page! =====

Creating your first page is **__SO__** easy! First you'll need to open a text editor. SDF has many text editors installed but new users to UNIX often find that "nano" is the easiest to work with.

  * "nano ~/html/index.html" - This command starts the nano text editor, creating a new file, called 'index.html' in your html directory.Once you've executed the command above. You'll notice that the terminal layout has changed. If you press keys on your keyboard you'll notice they appear in the "text buffer". Write out the text below into this program.
    <html><head>
      <title>My First Page!</title>
    </head><body>
      <h1>My First Page!</h1>
      <p>This is my first html web page!</p>
    </body></html>
  Now that you have copied the text out into 'nano', you need to save the file. To do this, hold down the 'CTRL' key on your keyboard and whilst pressing that, press the letter 'o'.Right, now, do you remember that URL you selected when you ran '"mkhomepg"'? Open a web browser and type that into the address bar. Hopefully, after a few seconds. You should see your very own web page!

===== Problems =====

The most important thing you need to have is **patience**. Sometimes updates when running "mkhomepg" may take a few hours to complete, sometimes they will occur almost immediately. By using the higher functions of your brain and **patience** you will solve a lot of the problems you may meet!

In case a page is not found on your site, the client may be forwarded to a page of sdf.org or redmartian, which can be confusing (but which is in fact completely reasonable, as all the domains belong to one entity). If you want to prevent this also for broken links, you have to set up error handler documents. Please consult the faq:WEB:7 item for this!

===== Diagnose =====

If your site is hosted on sdf.org (you are an ARPA member) then you can grep inside the httpd log file in "/var/log". For example:

  $ grep abc123.sdf.org /var/log/httpd/*.log

If your site is hosted on ma.sdf.org (you are a MetaARPA member) then your can look inside the log file for your web site in "/meta/log". For example:

  $ less /meta/log/abc123.sdf.org

For aditional help, check the information in the FAQ page [[https://sdf.org/?faq?WEB?05|"What About the Access Logs, Statistics, and Quotas?"]]

$Id: building_a_website.html,v 1.8 2020/01/01 22:29:35 niro Exp $
